Technology Expert Module:

Google Lit Trips

By: Laura Bagbey
Overview: Google Earth and Google Lit Trips
Google Earth is a downloadable computer program called a “geobrowser” that allows
anyone access to the world’s geographic information at the click of a mouse. There are three
versions of Google Earth—Free, Pro, and Enterprise—Pro and Enterprise have more capabilities
but all three provide the public with satellite and aerial imagery of the earth, third party data,
tools for creating new data points, and the ability to import GPS information. As Educators we
will be using the free version of Google Earth which can be found and downloaded from
http://www.google.com/earth/index.html. In recent years, educators in many disciplines have
discovered that Google Earth can be used in the classroom to create engaging and interactive
activities that are appropriate in a wide range of subject areas including geography, history,
literature, math and more.
As a Secondary English Educator, I will be focusing on the concept of Google Lit Trips
and how they are applied to the High School English classroom. Google Lit Trips is a project
developed as part of the Google Certified Teachers program that allows students and teachers to
utilize the information and technology of Google Earth to explore literature in a new and
different ways. The Google Lit Trip can be applied to most any piece of literature even if it is
only to discuss the author or the context for the author’s writing, however because of the nature
of Google Earth and the notion of a literary trip, the concept appears to be best applied to
literature that is set in history, discussed in relation to historical events, or is centered around
some kind of trip, quest, or journey.
How to Get Started With… Google Earth and Google Lit Trips

First, students and/or teachers must download the free, easy to install version of Google Earth
from http://www.google.com/earth/index.html.
 Before teachers and students can even begin to implement or design a Google Lit Trip
they must first familiarize themselves with the basic functions and user interface of Google
Earth. Google Earth provides many resources such as the Student Google Earth User Guide
which is designed to help users become familiar with its most commonly used functions.
Another helpful link is the Google Earth Tip Sheet, which is a one-page summary of some of the
most frequently used Google Earth functions. Students and/or teachers should definitely look
these websites over before getting started.
But don’t get scared yet!
While a basic understanding of
Google Earth is necessary to
create and utilize a Google Lit
Trip, you don’t have to be a tech
expert to know how to use
Google Earth or a Google Lit
Trip. The simplest function in
Google Earth is the “Fly to”
feature which allows you to
search for any location in the
world by typing in its address.
Explore the program, zoom in
and out, search for your house or
your school, have fun!
Anybody recognize this building? This is William and Mary’s new School of Education
in Williamsburg, Virginia!
The next step for students and teachers is to explore the Google Lit Trips home page
which can be found by typing www.googlelittrips.org into your web browser.

When you arrive at the site, you

will notice that there are several
different selections across the top K-5,
6-8, 9-12, Hi Ed, and Downloads etc.
When you click on these links, you will
be able to see and download a number
Google Lit Trips that have been made
by other educators.
I encourage students and
teachers alike to explore the site, and
download several of the pre-made Lit
Trips to get a good feel for what a Lit
Trip is and how other educators have
utilized Google Earth to contextualize
literature.
Kate Reavey at Peninsula College provides two useful YouTube tutorials called Google Lit Trips:
Part 1 of 2 and Google Lit Trips: Part 2 of 2 that can be found:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPiiAqXKy3g
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY55CR8vslw&feature=related
Teachers…
If you are lucky enough to be teaching a unit on a book that has a pre-made Google Lit Trip, like
The Aeneid or The Grapes of Wrath, you can download the trip and use it in your classroom. .I
highly recommend that you thoroughly explore the information on the links and have a concrete
idea of how you plan to use the Lit Trip before attempting to use a trip in class. There are
thousands of links and other pieces of data that surround the pertinent information on the Lit Trip
and if you are not careful the class can easily become unfocused or lost. You can also add your
own information to a ready-made Lit Trip to personalize it and tailor it to your classroom.
If you cannot or do not want to apply one of the ready-made Lit Trips to your classroom and
want to create your own, it is important to select a piece of literature that has a strong sense of
place. A good story for a lit trip doesn't have to involve an ‘epic’ or even a long journey. A
sense of place can come from either the historical significance of the setting or the centrality of
the setting to the narrative, but it would be very difficult to create a lit trip for a book like George
Orwell’s 1984 which lacks concrete textual references to factual places. To make your own Lit
Trip on Google Earth, it is important to start by thinking about the important locations or
historical events in your text. Watch some of the Tutorials on the Google Lit Trips site that take
you step-by-step through the process of adding place marks and embedding multimedia
information. Several of these tutorials can be found by clicking the Getting Started tab at the top
of the Google Lit Trips home page. As you plan a lit trip, make sure you keep your students in
mind and think about what information will help them to better understand the work and
envision places they have never seen. Remember, you can embed just about anything you create
or find online into a Lit Trip so it is crucial that you have a goal in mind and keep your trip
focused.

Teaching The Aeneid by Virgil

Example of the use of a ready-made Google Lit Trip
To use a ready-made Lit Trip such as The Aeneid, a teacher would simply download
Google Earth (if that had not previously been done) then download the trip under the 9-12 tab on
www.googlelittrips.org called The Aeneid by Virgil.
The trip will pop up in Google Earth in a window that looks somewhat like this:
 From here a teacher can zoom in or click on the red arrows to get more detailed
information about what happened at that location in the plot.

If when you try to click on a red arrow

the cursor looks like:
or like then you need to zoom
in more because there are multiple links
underneath that one spot from that
elevation.

Students…
Students can create their own Google Lit trips in much the same way that a teacher would
by exploring the locations characters visit, the proximity of the action of the text to important
historical events, the proximity of where the students live to the action of the text, the geographic
features that have an impact on the text, and much more.
The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Example of a Student Created Google Lit Trip (By: Laura Bagbey)

While Longfellow’s poem does not explicitly spell out the route of Paul Revere’s journey,
connecting the poem to his actual ride is an interesting interdisciplinary experience for students.
When a student sets out to create their own lit trip they should first do some research on Paul
Revere’s ride make a list of the important locations
– Paul Revere’s House in Boston where Revere left at 10:00 pm
– Charleston where he borrowed a horse from his friend Deacon John Larkin and verified
that the local “Sons of Liberty” committee had seen the pre-arranged signals. Revere
leaves Charleston at 11:00 pm
– Paul Revere reaches Medford at 11:30 pm
– Paul Revere arrives at the Hancock-Clarke house at 12:05 am
– Revere, Dawes and Prescott captured by British on their way to Concord
(Information from http://www.paulreverehouse.org/ride/real.shtml )

Students would then locate these places in Google

earth and tag them by using the yellow pushpin
button in the tools bar on the top of the window. As
indicated to the right.

Students can then create a folder by right clicking

under the Places tab, and click “Add- Folder” and
title it Paul Revere’s Ride. Students should then
place the locations in the desired chronological
order in the folder.

Students can then connect the locations by using the add path button (location indicated on the
image below) and then dragging a path between each of the locations.

Here is an
example of a path
that I created to
track Paul
Revere’s ride.
Such an example
would be very
easy for a high
school student to
create.
To further relate the Google Lit trip, students could add quotations from the poem and historic
information to each place marker by right clicking on the place name in the drop down menu and
then selecting properties.

To play your tour simply click on the play tour icon on the bottom right hand side of the places
menu (above) and your trip will unfold before your eyes! Make sure to save your trip frequently
and at the end to make sure that it is there when you return to Google Earth.

Classroom Examples
The Yellow Balloon Lit Trip
The students in Mrs. Wilkes first grade class at Okapilco learned about places around the
world by reading The Yellow Balloon, building a vocabulary list pertaining to land and water,
and then flying to those places by using Google Earth. By starting at their school in Georgia,
placing markers all over the world, and putting text into the pop up boxes these first graders
made their own interactive Lit Trip of the world.
To navigate to the video of Mrs. Wilkes class go to www.googlelittrips.org then click on the getting started tab,
there are two how to videos that proceed this one. Click on the PowerPoint image to make the video pop up in
Windows Media Player.

My Brother Sam is Dead Lit Trip

Mrs. Carol LaRow has created an entire unit for her seventh grade classes at Iroquois
&Van Antwerp Middle Schools based off of the historical novel My Brother Sam is dead.
This link provides the info on the school, teacher, and students that utilized this historical Lit Trip
http://homepage.mac.com/larow2/Voyages/lit.html
This link contains the downloadable Lit Trip itself and links PDF files of chapter questions, culminating activities
and more http://homepage.mac.com/larow2/Voyages/Sam/index.html
The Family Apart Lit Trip
“At Center Street Elementary School, in Williston Park, New York, Brusca teaches a
library-research class for fourth and fifth graders. From talking with a fifth-grade teacher, she
learned that students would be reading The Family Apart. It tells the story of the Orphan Train,
which relocated homeless and abandoned children during the mid-19th century.
…Following the directions at the Google Lit Trips Web site, Brusca created a new lit trip for The
Family Apart. She marked the path of the Orphan Train with a series of Google Earth
"placemarks." Each one provides additional information, such as historical photographs, and
poses a question for further student research.
In the school library, Brusca watched students virtually navigate the same journey the characters
took aboard the Orphan Train. "I've never seen them so intent," she says. "This got them to
deeper learning." The fifth-grade teacher had students create a newspaper to document the
journey, which gave them another way to apply what they were learning.”
—above text quoted from the article New York Children Take a Google Lit Trip by Suzie Boss
Found on Edutopia at http://www.edutopia.org/economic-stimulus-education-technology-
new-york

Notes on How to do a Google Lit Trip

On this site you will not find a class utilizing a Google Lit Trip, but what you will find is
an excellent example of how a real teacher, Mr. Thomas Cooper at The Walker School utilizes
and implements Google Lit Trips in his classroom and how other teachers might use them in
theirs. This site is also linked to his class wiki page which has many other useful links to
technology resources.
http://whaleriderproject.wikispaces.com/file/view/How+to+do+a+Google+Lit+Trip.pdf

Assessing … for the Classroom

Pro’s
» Allows students to locate a great deal of abstract information (aka literary settings) in a
concrete visual geographic or geospatial context
» Google Lit Tours are an effective tool for integrating the study of multiple disciplines
» Student designed Google Lit Tours create a forum for students to design and display their
own data
» Allows students and teachers to work with third-party data available on the web

Con’s
» Labels on the map can cause confusion when they become closely spaced at some zoom
levels.
» While Google Earth has a timeline feature that allows a viewer to rewind geographic
time, the program only has images of the world from 2000 and cannot show the earth’s
physical geography in the time of say, Macbeth.
 » Much of the information on Google Earth is third party data, so it in necessary to use a
fair amount of spatial awareness and common sense to determine the accuracy of
information.

Considerations for Teachers

» A live connection to the internet is required to run Google Earth even after you have
downloaded the Lit Trip so make sure your classroom has an internet connection before
planning a lesson around a lit trip.
» If you are going to ask students to create their own Lit Trip, you need to be sensitive to
the fact that some students may not have access to the internet at home. You need to
either provide choice or give the students time to work on their projects in school.
» If you plan to use a school computer, check to make sure it is OK to download the
Google Earth software.